Killing the Buddha

Burn, baby, burn. Two new books explore the holiness of flames.

It’s all Greek to them. Sacraments are just obstacles when a family’s tradition is at stake.

Can Catholics continue to overlook the Church’s crimes and misdemeanors?

Has God been reduced to cinematic sleights-of-hand?

Gillian Welch is no holy roller, but she’s not lying when she sings about God.

Growing pains and hanky panky at the San Francisco Zen Center.

A meditation on love songs and the rhetoric of True Love.

Can Hollywood answer the perennial question: Who was Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?

Has Tom Cruise abandoned Scientology for Bob Dylan?

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Oblivians, evangelists of the holy party.

So you’ve asked Christ into your heart… What if he has other plans?

In Allegra Goodman’s new novel, a hair-to-her-hips camp counselor gets religion, but never really gets it.

Fear and enlightenment at a Hindu goddess festival.

From the Inferno to Paradise with a cannibal pilgrim.

Undercover in Brooklyn’s mosh pit of piety.

“I had on the hot pants, I said I wuz for sale! But Jesus wasn’t buyin.”